After years of pretending that Siri’s quirks were endearing rather than mildly frustrating, Apple appears to be gearing up to give its voice assistant a long-overdue brain transplant, courtesy of generative artificial intelligence. According to the ever-watchful Mark Gurman at Bloomberg, iOS 18 may finally equip Siri with enough capability to hold a conversation without sounding as if it just awakened from a nap in 2011.
The report claims Apple has been cooking up a new suite of AI features that could bring Siri closer to the conversations you might expect from Google’s Gemini or OpenAI’s ChatGPT. The goal, it seems, is to enable Siri to be more helpful, possibly even finish a thought, although that might be considered cutting edge in Cupertino. The AI tools reportedly focus on summarizing text and offering intelligent replies, which might reduce the average user’s daily copy-and-paste activities by up to 17 percent, depending on one’s affinity for passive-aggressive emails.
Currently expected to be announced at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference in June, these generative AI features may rely heavily on on-device processing, though more computationally demanding operations will probably be handed off to Apple’s cloud servers, presumably nestled somewhere inside a reassuringly minimalist server room scented with recycled aluminum.
As with all things Apple, this rollout will likely be the technological equivalent of moving furniture in slow motion, starting first on newer devices such as the iPhone 15 Pro series before trickling down to those of us still using devices that have only recently figured out how to spell “machine learning.”
Not to be left behind in the AI race, Apple has apparently been negotiating deals with third-party AI providers such as Google. But true to its tradition of embracing innovation only after everyone else is already mildly bored of it, Apple is said to be packaging AI with that special Cupertino gleam that suggests it invented the idea all by itself.
No word yet on whether the new Siri will know what you mean when you ask it to “play something good,” but if it confidently queues up a podcast about artisanal sourdough economics, you’ll know progress has been made.
Siri may finally be getting smarter, which means fewer misunderstandings and at least one less reason to yell at your phone before coffee.